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Beefsteak and Mushrooms

A grilled beefsteak topped with a mushroom sauce made from butter, onion, sage, thyme, flour, water, beef stock, sherry, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a sauce pan, melt one ounce of butter. Add a small onion chopped finely, a little ground sage, and a little thyme. Cook over the fire until hot.

  2. Shake in two tablespoons of flour. When the mixture becomes brown, add one gill of water and let it boil for half an hour.

  3. Add three tablespoons of beef stock, a little salt, a little nutmeg, and one wine glass of sherry wine. Add one can of mushrooms. Let it boil for ten minutes.

Broil and serve the steak

  1. If the meat is tough, pound well with a steak mallet on both sides.

  2. Broil the beefsteak: Lay a thick tender steak upon a gridiron over hot coals, greasing the bars with butter before placing the steak. Cook one side until done, then flip and cook the other side. When done, place the steak on a warmed platter with a little butter, and serve on hot plates.

  3. Do not season the steak with salt and pepper while cooking.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

395Calories
26 gProtein
27 gFat
3 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Beef100g cooked250
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Wine2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)25
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.). Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavour to the steak.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce as it browns and cooks with the butter.
Beef stock
Adds savoury beef flavour and body to the sauce.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Mushrooms (in the method)
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Shake in flour and let it brown, then boil. Flour must be cooked in the butter until it browns and loses its raw taste before liquid is added. Then the long boil lets the starch thicken the sauce fully and smooth out any lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, wine, sherry, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, wine, sherry, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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